


After All

by quartetship



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Shiro's wedding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-27 02:55:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18295424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quartetship/pseuds/quartetship
Summary: On a particularly special night in June, Lance contemplates the potential for everyday magic - and new beginnings with old friends.





	After All

When Lance was a boy, he had heard from an uncle that magic can happen beneath the June moon. The air where he grew up was always muggy and thick with the excitement of the carefree days of early summer, then, so it had never been a difficult statement to believe. Even now, as the moon sees him nearing thirty, he stands surrounded by strings of fairy lights capped by a canopy of stars. There’s just something inherently magical about the potential these warm summer evenings hold. 

Yet the air here is drier than he’s used to, and it makes the dampness at the corner of his eyes easier to feel when the occasional flutter of wind ripples through the beautiful scenery surrounding him. 

This isn’t Lance’s childhood. This is a wedding - a time to be joyous and grateful for the friends he still shares his life with. Reaching for a third glass of champagne, Lance finds it difficult to feel the joy that he ought to, though. 

Across the expanse of ever-moving well-wishers, Lance notices Keith. The honor attendants have been dismissed to relax while the grooms prepare to enjoy their first dance, but Keith stands off a few yards from the makeshift dance floor in the middle of the reception venue, looking around like he isn’t sure what to do next. There’s an anxiety in his stance that Lance can feel, even from a distance. 

He closes that distance and comes to stand beside Keith, glad for the half smile his old friend gives him when their eyes meet. 

“So. Shiro looks great, huh?” Lance hasn’t spoken to Keith in what feels like years, and yet somehow the conversation picks up as if they’d just spoken a few moments before. 

Keith nods. “Always does.”

Lance raises his glass to his lips, letting it linger there before actually taking another sip. He leans back against the same table where Keith is half-perched. “Guy’s lucky,” he says, and he really means it. “Both of them are.” The champagne in his glass has gone warm and flat. 

“Mhm,” Keith nods absently, although his eyes are on the place in the middle of the dance floor where Shiro and Curtis seem to be in a world of their own. 

Lance’s chest twists at the sight of Keith watching the two of them. He knows that Keith is happy for them, too. But there’s something else - something in his expression that borders on sadness - and Lance wonders why Keith is wearing that feeling to a wedding of all places. 

He asks as much before he can stop himself. 

“Is it a him thing?” he says, not bothering to clarify further. Keith looks at him with a sharp turn of his head, blinking his eyes wide like he has been shaken from a daze. After a long moment, he shakes his head, frowning. 

“No. Not… I mean. Everybody’s so - I’m just not comfortable around this kind of thing, I guess. When everyone else has—”

“Big ass mood, man,” Lance interjects, feeling the painful twist in his chest return. This time the pain is entirely his own, though. He lets it drop like an albatross, pulling him down and punching the air slightly from his lungs as it does. 

Beside him, Keith bristles.

“I… oh. I didn’t mean... I’m sorry.” He pales, looking even more miserable than he did a moment before. Lance can’t bear the sight; not when he’d looked so good earlier that night. 

“Nah. Relax, okay? I just mean I understand, is all.” Lance sets his champagne glass aside behind him. He reaches out to squeeze Keith’s arm where it is crossed over his chest, giving him a smile. It’s all at once sad and sweet - probably not nearly wide enough to cheer the guy up - but it’s genuine. Lance laughs, despite the situation. “This… It kind of sucks, you know? It’s a ‘happy for them, sad for yourself’ kind of thing. I get it.”

Keith looks back at him for a moment, mouth twisted to one side as he worries the corner of one lip between his teeth. After a moment, he nods in agreement, his expression softening at the edges. 

“You’ve grown up a lot,” he says, and it’s more than any word of thanks could ever be coming from his lips. Lance grins, a little wider - a little brighter. 

“God, I hope so by now, you know? Thirty’s not far away. Especially for your old, decrepit ass.” He winks and knows he’s probably overplaying his hand, but the champagne and the warmth of the evening air make the moment feel fleeting enough for him to say and do whatever feels right. Maybe Keith will roll his eyes like he always has. 

Or maybe he won’t. 

“I make decrepit look pretty decent, I think,” he says instead, cocking his head to one side. The smirk that creeps across his face is razor-sharp, dangerous territory for eyes lingering too long. The dark, shiny hair pulled back at his neck falls slightly out of place and he looks like perhaps he’s had a few glasses of the same kind of now-or-never that Lance has, with a dusty blush settling over his nose and high on his cheeks. 

Lance has never seen anyone so disarmingly beautiful in his entire life. 

“Took the words right outta my mouth, honestly.”

“Hey…” Keith begins, and his arms fall to his sides like his hands are looking for something to do. Somewhere to go. “You, uh… D’you wanna dance?” He holds one of those hands out toward Lance, and for a fraction of a second Lance wants to laugh. He wants to snicker at the thought of the two of them, years ago and a lifetime of experiences before, bickering with one another and competing for the same scraps of happiness from a universe that seemed unwilling to let either of them have any. 

Instead, though, he takes the hand that’s offered to him and squeezes it in response. Perhaps their happiness is not a destination they will see one another along the way to, time and time again. Perhaps, Lance thinks as Keith lets him lead the way as other pairs take to the dance floor as well, happiness is a journey. 

Maybe that journey has always been meant to follow the same path for both of them, Lance thinks for a moment. A moment is all he has time for. Then he’s moving and smiling, laughing and dancing, lost to the sound of the music and the feeling of magic beneath the June moon. 


End file.
